Site Mobile Navigation

Goodbye and Good Luck

GOOD luck and all that to Katie Couric tomorrow night, but hers is hardly the most intriguing or nail-biting story about the long history and potent mystique of the “CBS Evening News” anchor chair.

Not even close.

If you want a truly delirious story about drama in the CBS newsroom, consider this: “The CBS Evening News” with Arnold Zenker.

It happened. And it’s probably safe to say that nothing like it will ever happen again.

Even though network newscasts no longer dominate the nation’s attention the way they once did, the anchor desks are still treated with near-majesty. Anchors are sent around the country on “listening tours”; the networks formulate intricate plans of succession. Nothing is left to chance.

Once upon a time, though — it was the spring of 1967 ...

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists was threatening a strike, but the networks evidently didn’t take the union’s threat seriously. Then, the strike was called. The news broadcasters — including Walter Cronkite and his CBS News substitutes — walked out.

Mr. Zenker was a network programming middle manager who had come up through business affairs. He was a pleasant-enough looking fellow of 28, with an earnest suit of clothing and thick-framed glasses.

The bosses at CBS looked around their offices at what was available to them, which apparently wasn’t much, and, with deadline approaching, they asked Mr. Zenker if he would mind delivering the news to the nation.

Mr. Zenker said that if they wanted him to, he would. (Before that day, he had never in his life appeared on television.) And for 13 evenings, as the union remained on strike, Arnold Zenker was Walter Cronkite.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

“I still have no idea why they selected me,” Mr. Zenker, now 68, told me recently. CBS gave him four hours’ notice that first day, and virtually no instructions. “No one even offered to buy me a blue shirt,” he said. On some days he would ride the bus to work. Around 4:30 p.m., someone would hand him a script, and he would read it aloud for practice. He would address the nation, and then go home.

Millions of people were watching Mr. Zenker, but there was one person who was not: Mr. Zenker himself. “I never saw myself,” he said. There were no home video recorders, and no one at the network offered to show Mr. Zenker tapes. He could have asked to take a look, but he didn’t. “It would have seemed like I was interested in keeping the job,’’ he said, “and the job was Walter Cronkite’s.”

He began to receive fan mail. It wasn’t as if he had no competition; at NBC, David Brinkley had gone on strike, but Chet Huntley had crossed the picket line, so that network was producing a professionally delivered broadcast.

When “The CBS Evening News” concluded each night, as Mr. Zenker recalls it, no one in the studio offered to go out with him for a drink or dinner. “No one really said anything,” he told me. “Not even ‘nice show.’ I think they thought that, by their standards, I was a freak. I was there by pure accident. I’d just say, ‘Good night, fellas,’ and go home.”

When the strike ended, Mr. Zenker was reassigned to his old administrative duties. He sensed that his presence in the CBS hallways made people uneasy. One day, in the men’s room, a colleague said: “Arnold, you’ve got a great future behind you.” He knew he had to leave.

Because of his brief Cronkite-chair fame, he had received some offers from local newscasts. He went on the air in Boston and Baltimore, but found he was not in love with broadcasting. Eventually he started a company to teach public speaking to executives.

Katie Couric has had months to prepare for her initial broadcast, and no one knows for certain what her first words will be. But for sublime grandeur, they are unlikely to match the first words the regular occupant of the CBS anchor chair intoned the evening that the 1967 strike ended. He looked toward the camera and, in that familiar, perfectly modulated cadence, said to America:

“Good evening. This is Walter Cronkite, sitting in for Arnold Zenker.”

Bob Greene is the author of “And You Know You Should Be Glad: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship.’’

A version of this op-ed appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Goodbye And Good Luck. Today's Paper|Subscribe